Oil Spill
Brendan McGinley, Asylum.com
It's estimated that at least 5 million gallons of oil (and now looking like probably much, much more) will have gushed into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the explosion that occurred April 20 at the Deepwater Horizon station. Naturally, this epic amount of oil spillage piqued our curiosity, leading us to ask this question: Exactly how much is 5 million gallons of oil?

Continue reading to learn what 5 million gallons of oil could have been used for.


Hummer Road Trip
Michell Zappa, Flickr
Let's do some simple math. There are 42 gallons per barrel of oil. That means 5 million gallons of crude oil equals about 119,047 barrels. From those barrels we can create 56,666 gallons of actual gasoline. So what can you do with nearly 57,000 gallons of gasoline? For starters, you can hop into a Hummer and drive from New York City all the way to Los Angeles. And back. About 100 times.
Fly Around the World
ChicagoKoz, Flickr
In addition to 20 gallons of gasoline, every barrel of oil can also produce 4 gallons of jet fuel (kerosene). That means all that oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico could create about 476,200 gallons of the stuff. In fact, that's so much fuel, you could fly 348 people around the world six times in a Boeing 777-200. That'd be a total of 130,000 nautical miles worth of air travel.
Fill Olympic Pools
David Jones, Flickr
Imagine that, somehow, the fools at BP devised a way to harness all that spilled oil. They'd have to put it somewhere, right? Right. It would take 7.5 Olympic-size pools to store every drop of that 5 million gallons. That's 660,253 gallons per pool (or 2.5 million liters).
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Cover NYC Eight Times
paulrademacher.com
The oil that's been spilled covers at least 2,500 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico. That's crazy enough to take in, but what happens when you relate it to land you're already familiar with? For example, spread that crude oil over NYC and you'll still have enough left over to do it a whopping seven more times.
Make Lots of Vaseline
Pjohnkeane, Flickr
Five million gallons of oil could also create roughly 8.2 million large jars of petroleum jelly at 13 ounces each. That's a whole lot of ... moisturizing. And more than half of the United States' yearly supply of the slimy stuff. If the growing slick isn't stopped soon, we anticipate a nationwide epidemic of severe chafing.